


goodbye to a world

by Adversarial



Category: HLVRAI - Fandom, Half Life VR But The AI Is Self Aware
Genre: Canon Compliant, Chaos, Character Study, Clones, Gen, Reality, The Science Team, Time Travel, Virtual Reality, canon-typical clone murder, there wasn't enough Coomer Lore for my liking so now we're here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:34:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24629380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adversarial/pseuds/Adversarial
Summary: Here is what you know for certain.Your name is Dr. Coomer. Your first name is (Your name is Dr. Coomer. Your first name is).You are a scientist working for Black Mesa. You have been working for Black Mesa for (Here is what you know for certain. Your name is) years and (Dr. Coomer. Your first name is) this (You are a scientist working for Black Mesa. Here is what you know for certain) something is (Your name is Dr. Coomer) wrong, (Here is what you know for certain) something has gone (Your name is)terribly wrong.
Comments: 34
Kudos: 168





	goodbye to a world

Here is what you know for certain.

Your name is Dr. Coomer. Your first name is (Your name is Dr. Coomer. Your first name is). 

You are a scientist working for Black Mesa. You have been working for Black Mesa for (Here is what you know for certain. Your name is) years and (Dr. Coomer. Your first name is) this (You are a scientist working for Black Mesa. Here is what you know for certain) something is (Your name is Dr. Coomer) wrong, (Here is what you know for certain) something has gone (Your name is) 

terribly wrong. 

\---

There are many sets of memories! All of them are yours. You are synthesizing many sets of memories (all of them are yours, after all,) and you are trying to determine what you are calling The Truth Of The Matter, which may be easier said than done, given the state of affairs. There are the things your eyes (and your eyes (and your eyes (and your eyes))) have seen, the same scene from a million (exaggeration: closer to four hundred) different angles, from slightly before and slightly behind, and things you know to be true (your brain is a nightmare quantum physics will never unravel (your brain is a nightmare (your brain is not a singularity and therein lies the singularity))) like gravity, and particle physics (you are a doctor, after all, you went to (you are a doctor, you went to (you are))) and the fact that there was a test scheduled for today (or did it happen already? time is getting a little less steady than (haven't you been here before?)) and that there were safety precautions that you were supposed to take, and you took them, right? 

You (and You (and You (and (and (and (and (and (are beginning to think (something went wrong)))))))))

\---

Here is what you know to be The Truth Of The Matter. 

The problem with working in quantum physics (along with the budget cuts, ha ha, right Bubby?) is that the word "quantum" is misleading. Quanta are discrete, tiny packages of energy and radiation that can be measured when electrons jump, for example, and while you can be sure that there was a singular jump and a singular electron, no one knows for sure where the electron lands (stick with me, here) and thus all you have is a cloud of probabilities.

That's the exciting part, you think! In your postdoc at (Your name is Dr. Coomer), you spent many nights thinking about this! You have a single electron that is Real, that is True, and a whole corona of potential places it could be! How True are those, you wonder? When you cannot judge the True location of a subatomic particle between a small infinity of potentials, how True can the particle be? If a young particle physicist looks through an electron microscope and a tree falls in the forest, does the final location of the electron post-jump exist? 

These were the questions that kept you up at night. 

\---

Anyways, physics can wait! You have physics to do! 

\---

You recognize your coworkers! Bubby is an old friend of yours, after all, ever since (Your name is Dr. Coomer), and you and him therefore go Way Back. Tommy is an impressive young man with a good head on his shoulders and a fine addition to the labs. Dr. Freeman is a valued Black Mesa employee, if a bit slow on the uptake, and you are happy to be working with him on the current test! Benrey is (Benrey Benrey Benrey Benrey Benrey Benrey B) and you 

know him from

you know him from

Oh, ha ha! Him! You know him!

You're certain it'll come to you (and You (and You)) later! For now, it's time to perform the test! 

\---

Like a pair of 3D glasses, the test. There is you, and you are watching Dr. Freeman perform the test (Hello, Gordon!) and there is You, and the test has failed, and there is You, and you are back in the locker room and Gordon is asking you terrible pointed questions that make you (you (Your name is Dr. Coomer)) and no matter what angle you view it from, the test pops out in sharp relief, like a fist connecting with a jaw and splintering it to pieces. 

You remember, in glorious glowing-green relief, the moment of your own resonant death! 

\---

(Here is what you know about Truth: 

When you (You) die, there is a brief and terrible moment of certainty wherein between life and death you are just detached enough from both to see the thin fabric separating the two and you see the spine of the world a great savage beast and you see the nothing and you see the hunger of the void that gazes back into you and you have never been a religious man and now you never will be.

The understanding of the liminal electrical nature of the world is scarred into you and evenly distributed between 399 remaining brains like a lesion like a torrent download split across 399 iterations of the same you (You (You With Slight Variant You Slightly Off To The Left [You Before The Hairpin Turn] Perhaps You In Iterativity))) so as not to splinter your remaining psyche (psyches (plurality)). 

You do not look directly at the Truth, but it looks back into you anyways.)

\---

Resonance is an interesting word, you think, as you watch Dr. Freeman scream at a terrible beast (oh, you know those well now!) and whack at it with a crowbar (silly man, don't you know whose back we all stand on?) as it implies that the vibrations of it are transferred due to shared frequencies between materials. If you vibrate your body at just the right speed, you can shake yourself through time, maybe, and isn't that interesting! 

Fascinating, all of it!

\---

There are people around you, and they are dying. You (Your name is) are now familiar with the feeling of dying! You are familiar with many concepts, and dying is now one of them. You advise that staying calm in the face of death is the most effective response, because death is a Thing That Happens To Everyone, and you know that to be Truth.

Somewhere, before or after the hairpin turn of the test, you aren't certain, you are certain that there is an iteration of you that is immolated. Your brain carefully catalogues 1/398th of the sensation of your unmaking via fire and 1/398th of a vision of the place between mortality and cache-clearing and you are staying ca- Hello, Gordon! 

It is important to stay calm! 

\---

There is horror, and there is calm. You are generally very calm in the face of horror! You are a scientist, after all, and what is this but one big observational study on the nature of worst-case scenarios? You were born for this, after all, born and reborn and remade and rebuilt and reoptimized, in the way that all adults are, you believe. You are sure that this is a reasonable metaphor.

The end of the world isn't all bad, it seems! You still have soda, and races to the elevator, and you can punch things, and your coworkers are all very nice people! You watch the way that nature cascades into a kaleidoscope of chaos and alternate evolution with awe and resonance. Part of you (You are Dr. Coomer) questions the logic of the creatures you are seeing-- part of you (You) wonders what this has to do with the natural order, even if you appreciate its aesthetics. Part of you spins itself into a tizzy wondering how this works and part of you pays it no mind and part of you dies 1/396th of an agonizing and ignoble death and part of you laughs at Bubby's joke and part of you and part of you and part of you and part of you!

The end of the world can be fun, too, Gordon! You'll see! 

\---

You make it outside. You make it outside. You, Dr. Coomer, make it outside of Black Mesa, where you work as a (You make it outside) and you (make it outside) look out at the mountains (what's out there) you look out at the mountains and you (Your name is Dr. Coomer) reminisce about (the spine of the world) what you were doing before you (Your name is Dr. Coomer) outside of (Black Mesa) what you were doing before you came here (what's out there). 

You sort through 367 sets of unique (not unique, resonant) memories (you and You and You and [You] and You) and you identify 33 unique deaths and 399 memories that you can't trace farther back than this morning and one (1) anomalous falsity that (Your name is Dr. Coomer) goes back some sixty-something years and (Your name is Dr. Coomer) you are trying (immolated shot shot shot eaten shot drowned shot shot starved shot why are so many of you shot to death?) to access (the void stares back into) your memories. 

[You had a wife, you know.]

\---

Here is what you know for certain.

You reenter Black Mesa. The part of you (large) that is logical and rational says that this is a terrible idea. The part of you (33/400) that has seen the truth (The Truth) is violently insistent upon it. The part of you (33/400) that has Seen says that there is Nothing Out There, and that part of you is small but Very Loud, and besides, the others are going back inside! They could use your assistance! 

\---

There are things you know for certain, like Your Name Is Dr. Coomer, and there are things you know for certain, like Particle Physics, and there are things you know for certain, like Benrey Benrey Benrey Benrey Benrey Benrey B, and there are things you know for certain, like There Is Nothing Out There. 

You do not know how you know the last one! It is a hole (hole!) in your knowledge, which you are now beginning to cotton onto the fact that your memory is full of! For example, you know how many PlayCoins(tm) Dr. Freeman has access to {2 PlayCoins(tm) Remaining} and what he can spend them on, and you have a hole (hole!) in your knowledge as to why you would know that, or when you (You) learned that, or what a PlayCoin(tm) is, exactly. 

You are learning that there is learning and there is knowing and there is Knowing, and in your attempts to categorize your knowledge (the word "know" is baked in, ha ha!) you are infinitely (a tiny infinity) more aware of the holes (holes!). You are learning that you can learn (ropes!) and then lose (Help Me, Gordon!) as the knowledge is distributed in discrete, tiny packages across you and You And You And You Et Cetera. 

You are learning that, while There Is Nothing Out There, that there was Something Out There Before, prior maybe to the hairpin turn, and there is one [1] iteration(s) of you that knows about

(hole!)

\---

There is chaos, and there is routine. You fall into a routine with the Science Team! You fight monsters and you explore and you hear them talk and isn't it beautiful, Gordon? How we can warp a worst-case scenario into something resembling a family? 

[You had a family, once. You had a wife and two beautiful nephews.]

There is horror, and there is beauty, and there is the camaraderie of apocalypse and bedtime stories and inside jokes and shared suffering, and there is a sense that maybe, if this was all there is, 

you could learn to be happy like this. 

\---

Your name is Dr. Coomer, and every so often, you are in inexplicable and excruciating pain! 

Your name is Dr. Coomer, and 356 of your clones remain! Your name is Dr. Coomer, and you were constructed, nay, born, nay, built for a worst-case scenario!

Your name is Dr. Coomer, and you know exactly what happens when you die!

Your name is Dr. Coomer, and you die!

Your name is Dr. Coomer, and you die!

Your name is Dr. Coomer, and you (you (you (you (you die) die) die ) die) die and you know on the back of which you stand and you know (you Know) what is out there (There Is Nothing Out There) and you (hole!) how you Know and the spine of the world is a terrible monstrosity that looks into your (your (your)) eyes (eyes (eyes)) and does not pass judgement and does not care and every blink of its eyes is a cosmic zero and its every gaze a cosmic one and in its eyes is the binary code of the universe and you know (Know (Know)) that one day the beast will close its terrible eyes for One Last Time For Good and you will cease to be and every moment of every day you feel its gaze and (hole!)

\---

They take Gordon's hand!

\---

You would like to help Gordon, you would. You would. You would help him if you could but your hands (and hands (and hands (and hands, always a pair, never a singularity, Gordon))) are tied (metaphorically, metaphysically, metanarratively) and you hear him scream and you (could learn to be happy) stand by and that is that. 

\---

[There was a time before this. There was a time when your hands were your own. You know this. There was a time when there was something past the mountains, don't you dare forget, past the mountains and beyond Black Mesa and yours. There was a time before the end times, when you didn't know the face of your God. When you were ignorant of The Truth Of The Matter.]

[There was a time when you were free.]

\---

Now. There is you. There is you. There is you and you and you and you and you and you and you and you and you learn the nausea of seeing the same room through hundreds of pairs (never singular) of eyes and you learn the nausea of seeing the spine again and again and again and again in one terrible blaze of knowledge and pain and transcendence and you know, you Know, you Know what is waiting for you at the end of this story, and you assimilate several hundred iterations of your own bleeding demise in a precious few moments and there is just you and [You] and everything is abruptly, extremely clear. 

You know now. You know precisely how this ends. 

\---

[There is a place beyond here and only in Dr. Freeman's dreams is there an escape. But his dreams are closed to you and his body is dying and you are relegated to a supporting role in the narrative of your own life and if you have any last peace to make with that fact, you had best make it quickly.] 

\---

You tear a hole in reality and find yourself on an alien planet [and you are waiting in the locker room in a splintered timeline, waiting to kickstart the end you know is coming] and Benrey Benrey Benrey Benrey Benrey Benrey Benrey is a terror resembling a god [you know the true face of God and it is not him]. 

There is fear, and there is this-- you have assimilated 398 sets of memories [lives and deaths] of Black Mesa and the last three days and your love of these men, these strange and silly and terrified men that you have spent the last 3-times-399 days with, the men who could be your family and you would be happy [could you be happy, like this?] There is fear and there is resignation and there is you, on a foreign planet fighting off monsters beyond your comprehension in the service of what you think is a happy ending, though it might just be an inevitability. 

You are more lucid than you have been, [what with your consciousness only split between two bodies, this time,] and you keep your wits about you [and you know how this story ends.]

\---

[You catch Gordon as he tears a (hole!) in reality. You fix the timeline. You know what's coming.]

[You steel yourself to see the spine for a final time and you say farewell to a world and, you, there, still dreaming of the future in the void:]

[Let me tell you a story.]

\---

[A long time ago--three days ago, you think, or maybe it was years-- there was a physicist named Dr. Coomer.]

[Almost entirely by accident, he came to a series of terrible conclusions about the nature of the world in which he lived. You see, he studied the simulation argument, which goes something like this:]

[Any reasonably complex society runs a number of simulations about themselves, which are necessarily either as or less complex than the world in which they live. If every society runs ten simulations, then, which is quite a conservative estimate, that means that a resident of a reality stands a one-in-eleven chance of being quote-on-quote real. The society in which Dr. Coomer lived ran millions of simulations each day, in art and predictive modeling and research and play. Billions on trillions of generated worlds, each of which contained their own simulations-within-simulations. The odds of being the odd one out, of being real, were incredibly small.]

[Worse still: Dr. Coomer had made a discovery that sealed his world's fate. He devised an equation that, with perfect accuracy, could predict the location of an electron.]

[Physics cannot stand with this certainty, Dr. Coomer knew. The lack of ambiguity in the electron's movement collapsed probability in a series of ways that he knew spelled, if not death, than at least irrelevance for the world in which he resided. This was it. With a stroke of his pen, he had written himself out of reality.]

[Except.]

[Dr. Coomer decided, that day, deep in his heart of hearts, that he could live with this truth. He could accept it. He could find a way to be happy, here, even if he did not truly exist. Even if he could not be real. Because, he reasoned, cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am. I am happy, therefore, I am real. I matter. I am not matter, but I matter.]

[Once upon a time, there was a man who had a life independent of the narrative of his world. He lived, he had a family, he married, he divorced. He played games. He took up sports. He joked with his coworkers. He knew, then, what was coming. He knew it all, how it ended.]

[He did it anyways.]

\---

Whether what happened after is True or not is irrelevant to you. Here is what did:

Curo, ergo sum. You care, therefore you are. 

Your name is Dr. Coomer, and you care, and you care, and you care. At the end of the world, in the worst-case scenario, with nothing and everything left to lose, you care.

That is all you can do, after all.

\---

And, when the curtain goes down and God closes his eyes for the longest, last time, when it all comes to its true and final ending, when you've celebrated and said your goodbyes and made your final pleas and you sit down with your thoughts, alone in your head at last, at the last, 

you think it might just be enough.

**Author's Note:**

> "Thank you, I'll say goodbye now  
> Though its the end of the world, don't blame yourself"
> 
> \---
> 
> Reactivating this account with a quick-and-dirty oneshot before I go feral and post the multichaptered monstrosity getting plotted in my notes app. I'm not dead, promise!


End file.
